MILAN, Italy — An astounding discovery may reveal the physical stature — or lack of it — of one of Christianity’s greatest advocates.

A scroll and accompanying rock drawing found during an archaeological dig in Turkey “took our breath away” with its revelation about the Apostle Paul said Anje Shroecker, head of a research team from the University of Milan.

“To put it bluntly, Paul was a midget,” Shroecker says.

Shroecker and his team found the rock drawing and a set of scrolls buried at the rock’s base. The scrolls belonged to a poor farmer who kept a sporadic journal. He describes traveling to Ephesus to “see the great speaker, Paul, this follower of Jesus they call the Christ.” The writer was shocked when “a man no taller than a child entered the room, climbed onto a table and began to exhort us to good works, and to explain the gospel. I have depicted his size on this rock.”

The scrolls and drawing date to 50 or 60 A.D., around the time of Paul’s second missionary journey.

“The ‘tiny Paul theory’ appears valid,” says Theodore Nadler of Union Theological Seminary. “This diminutive stature solves the riddle of Paul’s affliction that he alluded to in Second Corinthians. It also makes his traversing of the Asian continent much more impressive, though we now believe he was carried at least part of the way, which is probably why his companions tended to abandon him.”

They also speculate that Paul’s “short man’s complex” led him to persecute the church before his conversion, and that he was particularly angered by Peter and James who, the extra-biblical record suggests, stood much taller than average.

“It must have been a very bitter pill for him to swallow, being a man who came only to Peter’s waist,” says Nadler. “Of course, now we know why Paul referred to himself as the least of the apostles. He really was.”